The times of life

news

10-09-2010

Prof. Denis Duboule will inaugurate the fall semester at the University of Geneva with a conference entitled "The times of life: The glance of a biologist on the Being and Time". The conference, given in french, will take place on September 21, 18:30, at the auditorium Piaget at Uni Dufour.

«Time is a complex concept, whatever the context in which it is viewed. While some disciplines have fully integrated the concept of time into their reality - such as physics - others deny its existence. Life sciences, in turn, can be understood only through temporality, because life itself has meaning only in the unfolding of time. But which time are we talking about? The time of a chemical reaction, a pregnancy, or the formation of a species? And how these reference frames, recursive or linear, from the millisecond to the million of years overlap each other to build our personal and collective history? While the study of the different time scales at work during our development will perhaps let us understand the time in our personal life (from embryology to aging), the time scale of our evolution will probably require other concepts to transform the vague concept of 'evolutionary time' in a useful and practical tool.»